PETERSBURG, Ky., Jan. 6 (UPI) -- A biblical theme park with a replica of Noah's Ark built to the dimensions given in the Book of Genesis will use "green" architecture, its U.S. builders say.
Mike Zovath, senior vice president of Answers in Genesis, the organization that built the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., said the Ark Encounter theme park to be built this spring will include environmentally sustainable technology "from Day One," The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Scheduled to open in 2014, Ark Encounter will be built by a firm that specializes in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified construction and design.
LEED is a building certification system providing third-party verification that a project was designed and built using measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.
Even the Kentucky theme park's 500-foot-long ark, which its owners say will be the largest timber-framed structure in America, will use sustainable heating and cooling, and lighting designed to reduce energy expenditure, park organizers said.
Zovath said going green at Ark Encounter has to do with how he defines stewardship, the responsibility for the Earth that Christians believe was given by God in several key verses of Genesis.
"We are to be in dominion over everything that He created," Zovath says. "Not to waste it, not try to destroy it."
